


Split

by cattycannibal



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Danny and Phantom aren't quite the same person, Danny isn't okay, Identity Issues, M/M, Portal Split AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SAM AND TUCKER ARE GOOD FRIENDS, Sharing a Body, Trans Danny Fenton, Trans Male Character, i try to be as realistic as i can but. ghost physics y'know, phantom is a little shit, semi-realistic depiction of injuries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:13:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29706642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cattycannibal/pseuds/cattycannibal
Summary: When Danny walked into the Fenton Ghost Portal, he didn't know what to expect. That being said, ending up with a decidedly unhealthy dose of trauma, nerve damage and a ghost sharing his body definitely wasn't in his top three.
Relationships: Danny Fenton/Danny Phantom, Pitch Pearl - Relationship
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	1. Oh My Fucking God, He's Fucking Dead

**Author's Note:**

> It's official, DP has taken my brain and run with it. I haven't written anything in YEARS, but this idea completely blindsided me and held me at gunpoint until I sat down to write it. It's been a fun thing to do at school, at the very least lol.
> 
> This fic is entirely self-indulgent and just for fun, so I'll likely be slow with updates. I've been having a blast with it so far though, so hopefully this will be the thing that gets me to write consistently! I've seen similar plots floating around the Phandom, but I'm hoping my spin on it will be as fun for others to read as it is for me to write :)

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Sam,” Danny says warily, eyeing the recently opened archway of his parents’ latest invention. It’s an incredible feat, in theory - especially considering the adult Fentons are very much backyard inventors. Danny has no idea how they were able to make something this complex without official funding or materials. He can really see how his parents could be considered geniuses looking at the 8-foot Fenton Ghost Portal.

“It’ll be fine,” Sam scoffs, “You said yourself that this thing is a bust.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it magically safe to go inside,” he grumbles in response, but concedes the point regardless. The portal _is_ a bust, unfortunately. When his parents had excitedly plugged it in, the interior gave one sad spark then fell still. They’d been crushed, and had long since retreated to the kitchen table to both mourn the failure and pour over the blueprints to figure out what went wrong.

The engineering that went into its construction is still impressive, regardless of its dubious functionality. Sam and Tucker had all but begged Danny to let them have a look at it. Tucker is still gushing over the complex technology that makes up the portal’s frame, but Sam is more interested in the portal’s intended purpose. A machine made to punch a hole in reality and open a portal to the afterlife is right up her alley. Despite their interest in the project, they don’t seem all that surprised about its malfunction. Danny can’t blame them really; his parents’ eccentric nature regarding their field of study doesn’t inspire much confidence, especially when they’re researching something that hasn’t truly been proven to exist.

“C’mon, dude,” Tucker goads, “You have a safety suit and everything, a quick peek won’t kill you.” Danny groans, but ultimately decides it’s best to give in now. His friends can be ridiculously hard headed when something interests them, their everlasting ‘vegan vs. meat’ debate being a prime example. There’s no way he’ll be able to get out of at least one of them going inside, and Tucker’s right - Danny’s the one with a custom-fit hazmat suit. Better him than either of them; he’d at least have some protection if something did end up going wrong. Grumbling under his breath, he steps cautiously past the entrance of the portal.

“How’s it look?” Tucker asks, excitement dripping from his tone.

“Dark,” Danny replies dryly, and hears Sam snicker behind him. It really is dark inside; the lab’s overhead lighting doesn’t reach the interior of the portal. Feeling along one wall to keep his bearings, he slowly wanders deeper in. He turns and opens his mouth to tell his friends that this is a waste of time, but what comes out is a yelp as he trips over something in the darkness. His arm catches his weight against the wall, and he feels something depress under his palm like he’d pressed a button.

“Oh, shi-” he doesn’t get a chance to finish the swear, a horrifying scream tearing itself out of his throat instead. A white light blinds him, but Danny doesn’t notice the loss of sight as pain wracks his nerves. He feels like he’s freezing and burning all at once, his insides prickling like there are razors in his bloodstream. Distantly, he can hear his friends calling out to him in a panic, but the sound is eclipsed by the blood rushing in his ears and the harsh crackle of the electricity surrounding him. Time loses its meaning to him in the wake of the agony tearing through his body - he can’t tell if he’s been trapped within the portal for seconds or hours.

His knees buckle beneath him, and he pitches forward out of the portal. His friends rush to catch him, and his breath leaves him in a ragged gasp as their hands meet his skin. There’s a feeling of numbness, like he’d been left out in the cold for a while, but there’s an undercurrent of pins and needles at the points of contact. With what little body control he still has, Danny wrenches himself away from them. His spasming muscles can’t hold his weight, and he slumps onto the cold floor of the lab. His breathing comes in ragged gasps, unable to take even breaths through the spasming of his diaphragm. His vision darkens at the edges, and the last thing he sees is his friends’ horrified faces as they hover over him before blissfully losing consciousness.

\---

He’d awoken in a hospital bed hours later. He was greeted with the tear-stained faces of his parents and sister, Jazz having one of his hands clenched in a death grip like she was afraid she’d lose him if she let go. Not trusting himself to speak, he’d squeezed her hand back. The action prompted a fresh wave of tears when she realized he was awake, and she babbled incoherently through her sobs.

It took several minutes for his family to compose themselves enough to give him the verdict on his health. Evidently, it’s a miracle he survived an electrical shock that severe. His heart had stopped twice - once in the ambulance that had been called when his parents had stormed the basement after his scream, and again while the hospital staff assessed his condition. While his heart rate had stabilized before he woke up, the hospital wanted to keep him for a few days to monitor him and ensure arrhythmia wouldn’t set back in. He'd also been advised against binding for at least a week, which blows.

The accident also left him with nasty electrical burns, and Danny couldn’t feel most of his right arm. His doctors say that the numbness may wear off after a few days, but he’d likely have permanent nerve damage. Danny hasn’t seen the extent of the damage yet (and he’s thankful for it, just thinking about his likely charred flesh is enough to make him feel nauseous), but his palm had borne the brunt of the electricity through its contact with the portal wall. A wicked Lichtenberg figure stretches from that point of contact, branching up his arm and over most of his right shoulder and chest before ending just under his jaw.

His muscles will spasm on occasion, the pain evident even through the strong painkillers being administered through an IV drip. There’s nothing the doctors can do about it, unfortunately, so he just has to grit his teeth and wait it out. The episodes seem to be having longer breaks in between the more time passes, thankfully.

Sam and Tucker visited him on the second day of his stay at the hospital, and he was more than touched to see them there. He knows how much Tucker hates hospitals, and it makes warmth bloom in his chest to know he’d set aside his fear to visit Danny. They were both understandably rattled, and it was the closest he’d ever seen Sam to crying. Tucker hadn’t bothered hiding his tears, pulling Danny into a one-armed hug from his left side. He can’t help but feel a little guilty for worrying his friends so much, but the feeling was easily overshadowed by his relief at their presence.

Four days after the accident, Danny was released from the hospital with several medications, burn cream for his hand, and a sling for his still mostly-nonfunctional right arm. Now, he’s on strict bed rest at home. Jazz’s already overbearing nature has been turned up to eleven, and Danny can barely even think about walking around unaided without her breathing down his neck. He appreciates the concern (he knows it’s just because she cares), but _good lord_ does it feel smothering. She all but refused to leave his side for the first couple days, but eventually her sense of duty led her back to school. Danny loves his sister, he really does, but the newfound solitude is a welcome relief.

Danny sighs as he settles against his pillows, a frown marring his features as he absently rubs a hand against his chest. Ever since the accident, a strange sensation has been slowly building behind his ribcage. It’s not painful or even all that uncomfortable, just new and bizarre. It’s like a small cold spot in the middle of his chest, and if he focuses on it hard enough he can almost swear it’s humming. He’d described the feeling to the nurses that cared for him during his stay at the hospital, but any tests or scans they’d tried had yielded no results. Without answers, there was nothing they could do about it, and they’d simply told him to come back if it ever started to cause problems. 

It’s more than a little disquieting to think there may be something wrong with him that no one knows how to fix, or even what it may do to him.

As if reacting to Danny’s anxiety, the sensation suddenly redoubles, a thrum of energy making a shiver run up his spine. He gasps, shooting up to a sitting position. With a hand situated over his chest, he can feel the faint rumbling through his skin over his hammering heart.

Without warning, Danny suddenly finds himself falling through his mattress. He yelps in surprise, his left hand scrambling to find purchase among his bedsheets. With wide-eyed astonishment, he watches as his hand passes harmlessly through the fabric as if it doesn’t exist. He flops gracelessly to the floor beneath, air whooshing out of his lungs as his back makes contact with the hard surface. He stares up at the bottom of the bedframe now inches from his nose in shock.

_What the hell was that?!_

\---

The bed incident was apparently some sort of catalyst, as similar occurrences continued to plague him throughout the day. The buzzing sensation would kick into gear, and then some part of his body would phase through a solid object. A foot falling through the floor, his hand clenching into a fist rather than gripping a doorknob, a spoon slipping through his fingers while he attempts to eat cereal.

Needless to say, Danny is freaked out by the phenomenon. He’s certain this sudden intangibility feature isn’t a normal symptom of severe electric shock, but he has no idea what else it could be. The portal must have done something to him; what it did, exactly, remains to be seen.

He thinks about telling his parents several times as the day wears on, but something stops him every time. It seems as if fate itself is against letting his parents in on the situation - every time he opens his mouth to admit to his newfound ability, he gets interrupted by one thing or another. First it’s a phone call, then an unfinished experiment screeches from the basement, and eventually Danny just feels too awkward about the attempts to keep them going. Instead, he turns to his friends for advice.

> Danny: hey so hypothetically speaking if i were to have gotten super powers from the accident comic style what should i do about it
> 
> Tucker: im sorry WHAT  
>  Tucker: dude you cant just drop something like that cold
> 
> Sam: what do you mean by super powers??
> 
> Danny: i just walked through my door w/out opening it  
>  Danny: ive been goingt hrough solid objects all day & im freaking out
> 
> Tucker: UH???
> 
> Sam: okay yeah thats concerning  
>  Sam: cool as hell, but still  
>  Sam: try not to panic, tuck & i will come over as soon as schools out
> 
> Danny: tytyty  
>  Danny: if i break another bowl becuase i Physically Cannot keep hold of it im gonna mcfreakin lose it  
>  Danny: rip cereal :/
> 
> Tucker: f

As promised, Danny hears Tucker and Sam racing up the stairs not fifteen minutes after school lets out for the day. Sam bursts into his room, just barely holding herself back from slamming the door into the opposite wall. Tucker stumbles in behind her, huffing and puffing like they’d run all the way to Fentonworks. They probably had, actually; it usually takes Danny twice as long to walk home from school.

“How’s your arm?” Sam asks, content to avoid the elephant in the room for the moment.

“Better,” Danny replies truthfully, wiggling his fingers where they hang out of the sling. “I can move it now, and it’s not as numb as it was before.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not yet, but that might just be the painkillers talking.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

The conversation trails off, and they awkwardly eye each other as they both try to figure out how to broach the subject.

“So,” Tucker starts once he’s caught his breath, “super powers, huh?” Thank god for Tucker.

“Yeah,” Danny breathes, letting the back of his head thunk lightly on the wall behind him. “It’d be cool if it wasn’t really annoying. I keep dropping stuff and tripping when my foot decides it doesn’t want to exist on the physical plane.” Tucker whistles.

“So you get a marvel-style super mutation and it just turns you into a klutz?” Danny shoots Tucker a glare, and Sam elbows him in the ribs. “Ow! Alright, sorry, jeez. This whole thing is just kind of insane, you know? I have to joke about it or I’m gonna freak out.”

“Fair enough,” Danny sighs. Humor is his preferred coping mechanism as well, so the attempt is appreciated. Even if it’s technically at his expense.

“Is it just random?” Sam questions, “or do you think you could control it?”

“I- maybe?” Danny frowns. He hasn’t really tried doing it on purpose; he was more focused on getting his body to stay solid when he wants it to be. “I’ll try.”

Closing his eyes, Danny tries to focus on the slight humming within his chest. It always gets stronger when his intangibility kicks in, so it has to be the trigger, right? For several long moments, nothing happens. Just when he’s about to give up, the hum strengthens into a pleasant buzzing just behind his sternum. The skin above it tingles slightly, and then a chill rushes over his entire body like he’d been submerged in cool water. Upon hearing his friends’ twin gasps, his eyes blink open.

“What?” he says, shifting uncomfortably under the incredulous stares being directed at him. Something settles into the back of his mind like a thought he can’t quite decipher. It feels foreign, but it isn’t unpleasant, similar to the hum in his chest. Danny ignores it for now, more concerned with why his friends are looking at him like that. Sam breaks her silence first.

“Holy _shit_ , Danny!” She exclaims, and Danny flinches back instinctively when she leans her head into his personal space.

“ _What?_ ” He repeats, panic building as his friends gape at him like he’d grown a second head.

...He hadn’t, right? Suddenly not entirely sure of that fact, Danny whips his head around to look into the full-length mirror on his open closet door. The sight that greets him freezes his breath in his lungs.

Instead of his normal icy blue, the eyes that look back at him are a luminous acidic green. His short hair is now stark white, fluttering lightly about his head like he’s underwater. His ears have lengthened into tapered tips, and his open-mouthed shock reveals that his canines have similarly sharpened. The most startling change, however, is his skin. He’d always been pale - par for the course when you prefer to spend your time indoors. Now his skin has a sickly pallor, the near-white flesh underlaid by a bluish-green tint. His whole body gives off a soft white glow, and even his clothes were subject to the transformation. No longer was he clad in his worn NASA tee and baggy flannel pajama pants, but instead he’s covered by an inverted version of the hazmat suit he’d worn during the accident.

“Woah,” he breathes, then startles as his voice comes out with a tinny echo, like he’d spoken through a walkie-talkie.

“Dude!” Tucker cries, a note of hysteria in his tone. “You look like you just jumped out of a sci-fi movie!”

“Gee, thanks,” Danny grumbles, self-consciously running a hand through his hair. He notes with some combination of horror and awe that his hand glides through the swaying locks with little to no resistance, almost like it’s not there. Huh.

“It’s kinda badass, honestly,” Sam admits, tilting her head admiringly. “At least mutation was kind to you, you could’ve ended up like the hulk or something.” Danny glowers at her, but the distinct lack of fear or revulsion from either of his friends is deeply comforting. He may be some kind of mutated freak now, but at least he isn’t about to lose his best friends over it.

Something buzzes in the back of his mind, a prodding at his subconscious that startles him enough that he phases through his bed with a yelp. Sam grabs his arm before he can hit the floor again, pulling him back up onto the sheets. What was that?

“I can see how that would get annoying,” Tucker quips, leaning back like he’d stepped forward to catch Danny as well, his eyes wide.

“Uh- yeah,” Danny mutters distractedly, staring off into space as he tries to figure out where the bizarre feeling had come from. Was this another side-effect of the accident? Sam’s arm waves in front of his face, and he jumps in surprise.

“Hey, earth to Danny? Everything okay?” She asks, her brow pinched in concern. Danny gulps.

“Yeah, I just got a little... lightheaded I guess?” Sam looks at him like she doesn’t quite believe him, but she doesn’t push it either. He feels weird keeping this to himself after spilling the whole superpower thing, but he just doesn’t know how he’d explain what just happened. For a split second he’d felt almost detached from his body- like he was an outsider looking in at his own thoughts and motions. The experience has left him more than a little unsettled, to say the least.

“Maybe it’s some kind of drawback for using your powers too much?” Tucker suggests. “I mean, that’s how it usually goes in comics.”

“...Maybe,” Danny sighs, looking down at his gloved hands. The sling over his right arm is gone. It had been magicked away in his transformation along with the rest of his clothes, it seems.

Tucker’s thought is a good one, and maybe the dissociation really is just some kind of overuse drawback. The explanation doesn’t quite sit well with him, but he’s too new to his abilities to argue it. They sit in silence for a moment, and then Danny makes another startling observation.

He isn’t breathing.

The realization startles him to his feet, and he hisses in pain as his right arm flops to his side. He stills, then places his uninjured hand over his chest as he attempts to inhale. The breath is shaky, like the movement is unpracticed and not the essential bodily function it had been for the past fourteen years of his life. The air burns in his lungs, and he forces it out just as quickly as it entered. In his growing panic, he notices that he can’t feel his heart beating, either. The only thing he can feel from the hand over his heart is the hum of whatever it is that fuels his powers.

“Oh, God, I can’t- I don’t need to breathe!” he wheezes, burying his hand in his dubiously tangible hair once more. He begins to pace, his mind whirling with the implications. “Am I dead? Is that what’s going on? Am I a fucking _ghost_ now?!”

“Danny, calm down,” Sam soothes awkwardly, holding her hands in front of her. Despite her words, her own fear at his discovery is plastered on her face. “We don’t know that for sure. There could be a completely reasonable explanation, but we won’t be able to figure it out if we’re panicking.”

“She’s right, dude,” Tucker agrees, placing a hand on Danny’s shoulder to keep him still. “You were fine before you transformed, right? Maybe you just need to turn back.”

Danny squeezes his eyes shut, takes a moment to collect himself, then nods. “Yeah, you- you’re right. I just need to figure out how to turn back.” He sits heavily on the side of his mattress, both hands falling into his lap. He takes another painful, stilted breath, then focuses on his humming chest once more. It takes him much longer to quiet it than it had to wind it up, but he manages. Cold energy rushes over his form once more, and he shivers. To his profound relief, he can _definitely_ feel it when his heart immediately begins hammering in his chest, and breathing comes naturally once more.

“Did it work?” Tucker stage-whispers, wringing his hands nervously in front of him.

“Yeah. Thank god.” Danny rubs his face tiredly, slumping to lie back on his bed. This whole ordeal has left him utterly exhausted, and all he wants now is a nice long nap.

“So. Not dead.” Sam plops down beside him, nudging his knee with hers. Danny grumbles incoherently in response. What a fucking day.


	2. Oh My God, They Were Roommates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny meets his new roommate!

The first thing he notices upon gaining awareness is the all-consuming pain. He can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from; his sense of self is still too fragile to attach his mind to the body he inhabits. Nerves that aren’t quite his are alight in pain, and he feels it just as clearly. Then, all at once, the pain stops. He feels weak, untethered. Thoughts that aren’t his own filter through his head, but he can’t make anything out. Before he can try to decipher them, his consciousness fades.

\---

For an indeterminable amount of time, he drifts in and out of awareness. He’s too weak to hold any form of coherence for more than a few minutes at a time, but every now and then he’ll catch a glimpse of something.

Seeing in and of itself is a strange experience- like he’d been blind his whole life, and only now has the ability to interpret the world through sight. His thoughts and memories are scrambled and nonsensical, and he can’t attach meaning to anything in sight at first. He feels detached from his surroundings, the body he sees through moving without his input. Mostly, he sees people. Faces with names he knows, but they too feel foreign to him. Maddie, Jack, Jazz, Sam, Tucker… They’re strangers to him, but every glimpse ignites a feeling of familiarity.

He isn’t alone in his mind, either. It’s not something he’s immediately conscious of; his own thoughts are so disorganized that he confuses the stray emotions for his own. As time wears on, however, he gets better at organizing his mind, and he learns to recognize the invading thoughts as someone else’s. They start off nondescript- just a vague impression of a feeling he can’t make heads or tails of. This, too, he quickly learns to parse. 

As his bouts of consciousness gradually get longer, he uses the time to try and figure out who he is, and why he’s so disconnected from the physical world. The longer he thinks, the more he begins to realize that the fragmented memories he has aren’t his, either. They belong to the person controlling the body- to _Danny_. The name comes unbidden, but it settles in his mind the same way that the others had. He knows, instinctively, that he isn’t Danny. At least, he isn’t _anymore_. The moment Danny had gotten caught in the activated portal, He had gained an awareness separate from the boy. The connection explains his familiarity with the people he’d seen so far- they’re close to Danny.

The distinction he’s made between himself and Danny seems to strengthen his presence insurmountably, and he sees with complete clarity when Danny falls through his bed. He can feel Danny’s panic, but to him, the tingling of intangibility on their body’s skin feels like home.

A frigid chill has settled in their chest, and an instinct buried deep in his subconscious whispers that it’s their ghost core. Is he a ghost, then? It would make sense; by all accounts, that amount of electricity should’ve killed them. He can feel Danny’s heart hammering in their chest, though, as well as the haggard breaths as the boy attempts to calm himself after the fall. They can’t be dead, then, but he thinks faintly that they aren’t quite alive, either.

He manages to stay coherent for most of the day, his awareness only drifting away a handful of times. Every now and then, he’ll tug at their core and watch in amusement as Danny stumbles or drops whatever he’s holding. So sitting idly in the back of someone’s mind is boring, sue him. It serves a secondary purpose, anyway- every demonstration of his own ghostly nature expressed through their human body strengthens his connection to Danny that much more. With every limb drawn away from the trappings of the physical plane, he gains a clearer understanding of Danny’s thoughts and emotions. 

By the time Sam and Tucker arrive after school at Danny’s request, he’d made some real progress. Their core is much more stable than it had been since its creation, and there’s a clear divide between his own consciousness and Danny’s.

It startles him when a few minutes later, Danny is the one to draw on the power within their core. The world around him suddenly feels much more real. He can feel the soft linen of the bed sheets they’re sitting on, the weight of their body, the feeling of the fabric comprising their jumpsuit sliding against their skin. The sudden onslaught of sensation is overwhelming.

He feels as Danny begins to panic, then watches through his eyes as the boy turns to catch sight of his reflection. He mentally lets out an appreciative whistle at their body’s new look. He wonders if this is what he’d look like if he wasn’t confined to Danny’s mind. The thought makes him frown internally. Is he really doomed to exist unnoticed, trapped inside the mind of someone that doesn’t even realize he’s there?

As if responding to his silent question, his mind lurches, and he’s suddenly in control of their body. Panicking at the abrupt change, he instinctively reaches for their core, then yelps as he falls through the bed. He flings out an arm to catch himself, and Sam grabs it to hold him up. Then, just as suddenly as it came, he loses control of their body once more.

Mind reeling, he settles back into the recesses of Danny’s mind. In his own shock, he almost doesn’t notice when Danny’s fear sparks anew, more frenzied than the last. When he sets his attention back on his human (?) counterpart, he hears his panicked words to his friends about their apparently missing bodily functions. Belatedly, he realizes with a start that he’s right- they _aren’t_ breathing, and their heartbeat has slowed to a halt. With a creeping sense of dread, he decides that his earlier deduction had been correct. They may not be fully dead, but they sure aren’t alive, either. Normal people need oxygen and a beating heart to live, after all. In this form, they have no need for either.

When Danny changes back into his human body, relief floods his side of their connection when his body functions as it had before the transformation. He’s relieved as well, but his dawning horror of realizing what being even part ghost truly means for them keeps it subdued. Steeling himself with grim determination, he makes a decision.

He has to talk to Danny.

\---

Sam and Tucker stick around for another couple hours after Danny’s existential crisis. He’s too mentally and emotionally strung out to continue talking about the aftereffects of the accident, so the three cluster around Danny’s old computer to mindlessly scroll the internet and play a few rounds of Doomed (Danny mostly just watches Sam kick Tucker’s ass; he’s no good at playing left handed and his right hand doesn’t quite listen to him yet). They leave for home around dinner time with the promise that Danny will keep them in the loop about any super power craziness that comes up, and Danny spends most of that night’s family dinner wolfing down his food and praying to every deity he can think of that he stays solid through the whole event. He catches Jazz shooting him looks across the table every so often, but she doesn’t say anything, so he’s all too happy to ignore her scrutiny for now.

When he steps back into his room after dinner a wave of exhaustion hits him all at once, and he decides it’s high time he slept off the day’s events. But when he settles into his bed (it’s more of a chore than it used to be; he has to arrange pillows at his side to keep his injured arm elevated while he’s asleep), he finds himself with the same problem he’d had ever since the accident- he’s too anxious for sleep to claim him easily. It’s one of the more infuriating aftereffects of the accident. Danny had always been a heavy sleeper, a trait he’d inherited from his father. Now, however, his previously restful slumber is broken up by nightmares- by memories of his brush with death in the portal.

He has yet to wake up screaming, but it’s a close thing. Every time he slips into unconsciousness, he awakens no more than a couple hours later caked in sweat, his muscles trembling with the phantom pains that always come with such vivid reminders of the electricity that once tore him asunder. He lays there panting for breath in the wake of the nightmare, then repeats the cycle anew until the sun creeps over the horizon.

Now, close to a week after the accident and unfortunately familiar with being put through his paces every night, Danny finds himself subconsciously clinging to the waking world. He knows he needs to sleep- his body is sluggish with exhaustion, his eyes heavy with the weight of all the near-sleepless nights. Even so, he can’t bring himself to let sleep claim him without struggle. It feels too much like giving up, as ridiculous as he knows the sentiment to be.

Eventually, he loses the battle once again, and sleep drags him under its blanket of darkness.

The memories don’t come this time, however. Instead, Danny’s eyes blink open to take in... nothing. Sitting up, he cranes his head around to look for something, anything, but all he sees is a vast expanse of black- dark enough that his surroundings could be as small a space as a closet or as wide as a football field and he’d have no way to tell. He gulps nervously at the thought.

“Hey, I did it!” Danny whips his head around at the sudden, echoing voice so fast he feels his neck pop. Immediately, he catches sight of a glowing figure sitting cross-legged behind him, a wide grin stretching across his face. His very _familiar_ face. 

Danny gapes, flabbergasted, locking eyes with the bright green irises that had looked back at him from a mirror not hours ago. Somehow, the figure’s grin manages to widen.

“I’ve been trying to talk to you for hours, dude,” the figure states, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Idly, Danny notes that the action causes the figure’s entire body to bob slightly, as if he’s floating in the darkness. “Guess it makes sense that you’d have to be asleep to talk to me, though. At least this first time.”

“Wha- who are you?” Danny splutters, his brain short-circuiting as he tries to wrap his mind around what he’s looking at.

“I’m you,” the figure states simply, like that makes any sense. “Kinda. At least, I used to be. I think I’m the part of you that died in the portal accident. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. I heard you talking to Sam and Tucker, and I think that I might have some stuff to share about the situation that you may not have figured out on your own. I also just wanted to talk to you because it’s really boring in here. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

The figure’s grin turns sheepish, one hand coming up to rub the back of his head in a nervous gesture Danny recognizes as one of his own. Danny has no idea how to even begin unpacking all of that.

“You’re… me?” Danny asks meekly, and the figure makes a so-so hand gesture that really does nothing for Danny’s peace of mind. “How does that work? I’m still me, so how can you be me too? On that note, how can you only _kinda_ be me? How the hell does that work?”

The figure takes Danny’s rapid-fire questioning in stride, simply shrugging before answering, “No clue. I’m not a scientist. We’re a solid C student, remember? Maybe Jazz would be able to figure it out; she’d have a field day with this.” Despite himself, Danny snorts. His sister _would_ love to psychoanalyze something like this, honestly. It’s right up her alley.

The figure seems to relax imperceptibly at Danny’s quick huff of laughter, his shoulders losing a line of tension he hadn’t noticed before.

“You’re taking this pretty well so far. I thought there’d be more yelling, honestly,” the figure confesses, giving Danny another grin.

“I think I’m still processing. I’ll probably have a panic attack or something later.”

“That’s fair.” Silence stretches between them for a few seconds, and then something the figure said before finally catches up to him.

“Wait,” Danny starts, eyebrows flying into his hairline as he turns his wide eyes to the figure once more, “the part of me that died? What does that mean?!”

“Ah,” the figure says, a grimace replacing his previous smile, “That. Uh, well, you know that cold feeling in our chest? That’s our ghost core. All ghosts have one- it’s what gives them their powers. It’s what’s giving us _our_ powers. We’re, uh, part ghost? At least I think so. Originally I thought that we legit died, which formed me, but then the electricity restarted our heart and revived you, so I ended up just kinda… possessing our body or something? 

“But then you tapped into our core on your own, and humans can’t do that, which means you have to be part ghost too. It’s part of why our powers are short-circuiting; our core is trying to adapt to existing within a mostly human body. I think. Again, not a scientist.”

Danny gapes at the figure (his ghost? apparently? what the _fuck_ ), his mind whirring as he attempts to process everything the other had dumped on him just then. Danny had already figured out that he isn’t fully human anymore, his earlier transformation and aforementioned powers were plenty evident of that fact, but he hadn’t thought he’d actually _died_. Or, well, half-died? Christ, he’s going to have an aneurysm at this rate. Or start crying. Or both, both is good.

“This is batshit,” Danny groans, burying his head in his hands. Going by the lack of pain the action causes him, he concludes that wherever they are (his subconscious maybe? trippy), his injuries hadn’t come with. Silver linings.

“Agreed,” the ghost hums, but doesn’t offer anything else. Danny’s glad for it- he doesn’t think he can handle anymore bombshells right this moment. As he runs their conversation through his mind again, he quickly finds some things he’ll need more clarification for.

“I have a question- actually, I have a few,” he states, looking back up at the glowing teen to see that he’d flopped onto his side, resting his head on one palm.

“Shoot.”

“You said that you could hear me talking to Sam and Tucker earlier, right?” The ghost nods. “That’s.. vaguely terrifying, but also kinda cool. Is it just hearing, or can you see too? Can you feel everything I feel?”

“I can see too,” he says, then pauses. His bright gaze is unfocused, like he’s mentally reliving his side of the event. “And… I can kinda feel what you do? It’s usually a bit muted, like I’m covered in a thin layer of rubber or something, but I can still feel some of it. It’s much clearer in our ghost form, though. I could feel everything like that, it was really weird. Dunno how you deal with it all the time.”

“Huh. Speaking of the ghost form thing,” Danny chips in when it seems like the ghost had finished speaking, “Do you know what happened when I phased through my bed that second time? It felt like how you said you usually feel- like an outsider looking in.”

“Oh, yeah. Turns out I can take control of the body, too.” Danny nearly chokes at the other’s casual admission, like the ability to wrest control from him at any point isn’t something straight out of a horror movie.

“So you can just _take over_ whenever you want? Just like that?” He bites out, hands clenched into fists in his lap as he tries not to freak out. Losing the bodily autonomy he’s had since birth is frankly horrifying, even if it’s to his own ghost (which he’s honestly trying not to think about too hard).

The other frowns. “I’m… not sure, actually. I didn’t even do it on purpose the first time, it just _happened_. I don’t think I could actually force you out of the ‘driver’s’ seat, so to speak, if you fought me on it. I mean, our body does still belong to you, technically. Mostly.”

“The technicality isn’t all that reassuring to be honest with you, chief,” Danny grumbles, but he forces himself to relax anyway. It’s not the ghost’s fault they’re in this weird ass ‘my body is apparently an airbnb now’ situation. He’s as stuck as Danny is- likely moreso, considering Danny appears to be the ‘host’, for lack of a better term. God, this whole this is _so_ fucking weird.

Danny sighs, furiously scrubbing his hands over his face like it’ll clear his mind any. “Whatever, we’ll figure it out. What should I call you, anyway?” he asks suddenly, raising an eyebrow at the ghost, who blinks in surprise. ”It’d be weird for us both to go by Danny.”

“I guess it would get confusing,” he concedes, tilting his head back as he hums in thought. A moment passes, and then a shit-eating grin splits his face in two. “I got it! Call me Phantom.” he says, looking entirely too proud of himself. Danny blinks, then groans loudly as he realizes what the other had just done.

“Did you seriously just name yourself a pun?!” Phantom only laughs loudly in response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> urgh, I really struggled with writing Phantom's pov at the beginning there. Writing a character that doesn't have a name yet is really hard lol. Also, take a shot every time I say 'awareness' or 'consciousness.' But hey, Pitch Pearl meets for the first time! Hooray! Writing their dialogue was really fun, Phantom is such a shit haha. I got in trouble for writing this in class instead of doing my work, so y'all better appreciate it ;p

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! Reviews are my life blood >.>


End file.
